The Fix

by David Baldacci

  enemies gain access to this information it could be 9/11 again, only far worse.”

  “That’s a big statement,” said Bogart, staring at her in amazement. “If things are that dire, our agencies cooperating may be the best strategy.”

  Brown rose. “Thank you for your time. I would appreciate any files you have collected be sent over to my office, Agent Bogart. You can use the contact information I’ve already provided.”

  She had turned to leave when Decker spoke.

  “I saw Walter Dabney shoot Berkshire. And I saw him try to blow his head off.”

  She turned back to look at him. “And your point?”

  “I’m not sure you’re cleared for it.”

  She gave him a tight smile, pivoted on her heels, and walked out.

  Bogart looked over at him. “We might need to give you a refresher course in interagency etiquette.”

  Decker said, “Then make sure Agent Brown attends it too. So what’s our next step?”

  “Next step in what?”

  “The Dabney case.”

  “Decker, didn’t you just hear the woman? We’re off the case.”

  “I heard someone from DIA come here and tell the FBI that they’re off the case. I haven’t heard anyone from the FBI tell us that.”

  Bogart started to say something but remained silent.

  Milligan said, “I think Decker has a point, Ross. And far worse than 9/11? Our mission is to protect the United States. If the Bureau’s not going to be involved in something potentially this big, then what the hell are we doing?”

  Jamison added, “I think so too. And can I just say that I do not like that woman one teeny little bit.”

  Bogart stirred. “I can’t say I much like her or getting thrown off a case that happened right on Bureau territory. If the stakes are this big we can keep going, but we have to do so cautiously. Any misstep and we could get in trouble. And that won’t help anything.”

  Decker rose.

  Bogart said, “Where are you going?”

  “To find a beat-up Honda.”

  CHAPTER

  17

  “I’LL ALWAYS HAVE your back too, Amos.”

  He and Jamison were in her car.

  His knees jammed against the dashboard, he turned to look at her. “I know you will. Have you talked to Melvin yet?”

  “I left a message. I haven’t heard back yet. What did you think of this Harper Brown?”

  “She’s apparently good at what she does.”

  “Which is what exactly?”

  “Bullshitting.”

  “So you don’t believe what she said?”

  “She works in the intelligence field. They’re trained to lie and sell it like the truth. They obviously undergo the same indoctrination as politicians.”

  “So if she’s lying, that complicates an already complicated situation.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “But why would she lie?”

  “She may not be entirely lying. Dabney might have been selling secrets. Maybe he had a gambling habit. But the reason for killing Berkshire doesn’t make sense.”

  “But he was terminal. Maybe he was on meds. Maybe the cancer messed with his brain.”

  “And maybe, Alex, the truth lies in another direction.”

  A frustrated Jamison refocused on the road. “How are we going to find her Honda?” she said tersely.

  “We’ve only heard one person mention the Honda. So that means we’re going back to school.”

  “You mean Virginia Cole, the principal.”

  “Yes.”

  “But she basically just saw her drive in one day, she said. Do you really think she got the license plate number?”

  “I doubt she did.”

  “Okay, then what’s your idea?”

  “I plan to consult an eyewitness.”

  Jamison continued to pepper him with questions. What eyewitness? What was he thinking? But Decker only closed his eyes and said nothing.

  * * *

  When they got to the school Decker pointed at the doors to the office, where surveillance cameras were aimed at the parking lot.

  “Crap,” said Jamison. “I didn’t notice them before.”

  “Most schools have them now,” said Decker. “Some schools have metal detectors and armed guards and armed teachers and armed students. Welcome to education in the twenty-first century.”

  They spoke with Cole and she led them back to the office where her technical support staff worked. One of the techs pulled the recorded feeds from the surveillance cameras and put them up on a computer screen.

  Decker asked Cole, “Do you remember the date when you saw her drive the Honda in? Just ballpark?”

  Cole thought for a few moments. “Within the last two weeks. It would have been in the morning, around seven-thirty.”

  The tech hit some keys and said, “I put those time parameters in. You can use these keys to move through the frames.”

  “Thanks,” said Jamison as Decker settled himself in front of the computer.

  Cole asked, “Do you know if there have been any funeral arrangements made for Anne?”

  Decker didn’t answer.

  Jamison said quickly, “I’m afraid we don’t know that information. The thing is we haven’t been able to locate any family members. Do you know of any?”

  “No, she never talked about her family. On our employment form we have a section for a point of contact in case of emergency. She left it blank. She never really talked about her past, actually. At least not to me. I do have the name of one teacher who might be able to tell you more. She’s not in today, but I can have her contact you.”

  “Great. Thank you.”

  “Absolutely. Anything that will help us get to the bottom of all this.”

  Cole and the tech then left them alone.

  Jamison pulled up a chair and sat next to Decker as he used the keys to fast-forward through the frames of video. She eyed him curiously. “Is that how your memory works, Decker? Flashing frames like that?”

  “Pretty much,” he said absently. “Only mine are in color.”

  He stopped advancing the video and pointed at the screen.

  “There she is.”

  It was indeed Anne Berkshire in her dark Honda Accord. As Cole had earlier told them, it was beat-up. A front fender was knocked in, the passenger door had a long scrape, and there were some rust spots on the hood.

  “And there’s the license plate number,” said Decker, who memorized it on the spot even as Jamison wrote it down.

  Berkshire pulled into an empty space, got out, and opened the rear door to retrieve her small briefcase and purse. She walked toward the door and thus toward the cameras.

  “God,” said Jamison with a shiver. “Knowing she’s dead, this is creeping me out.”

  Decker looked at the time stamp on the film. “Ten days ago.”

  “She looks…normal enough. Not like anything’s weighing on her mind,” observed Jamison.

  “You mean like a spy ring about to be cratered,” said Decker. “And she arrested for espionage?”

  Jamison snapped her fingers. “Maybe that’s where she got the money.”

  “Maybe. But Agent Brown didn’t tell us how long this had been going on. And we still can’t find a connection between Berkshire and Dabney.”

  “Well, Dabney obviously had another life that was invisible to those who knew him. Maybe Berkshire was also a gambler and they met that way.”

  “Right, pick someone with a gambling addiction like yourself to convey secrets to. I’m sure nothing could go wrong there.”

  “It’s still possible,” persisted Jamison.

  “But why would he need her, Alex? What skill set or advantage does a substitute teacher offer to a connected guy like Dabney who’s selling government secrets?”

  “Maybe teaching is a cover. Maybe she’s an actual spy. That’s why we can’t find anything on her going back past ten years.”

  “That
might be,” said Decker, though his tone evidenced he was not convinced of this. “We need to run the plate.”

  “You think it’s registered to someone else?”

  “No, I don’t. I think it’s registered to Anne Berkshire, just under another address. And maybe another name.”

  “So you do think she’s a spy or something.”

  “Or something,” replied Decker.

  When she looked at him he added, “Brown said that critical secrets were stolen by Dabney. He had to pass them along to someone. If they were working together, you’re right, Berkshire had to be part of some spy ring. If she didn’t pass the secrets on yet, we might be able to stop the apocalypse that Brown was describing.”

  “But if she was a spy why wouldn’t she have passed on the secrets by now?”

  “There could be any number of reasons.”

  Jamison added, “And pray that our enemies don’t have them already. Or else we’re in deep shit.” She paused. “You don’t think Brown was talking nukes, do you?”

  Decker looked at her. “Keep saying prayers, because I don’t know if she was or not. But the lady didn’t strike me as someone who overstates the case. So her worst-case scenario is probably Armageddon.”

  “Wonderful.”

  CHAPTER

  18

  “DAMN!”

  Todd Milligan stood shoulder to shoulder with Decker as they surveyed the house the next morning.

  The rundown on the Honda’s license plate had led them here. A ramshackle farm cottage down a rural road in the middle of Loudoun County, Virginia.

  Decker nodded at Milligan’s exclamation. “From multimillion-dollar condo smack in the middle of upscale suburbia to this.”

  “But why would she even have this place, Decker?”

  Decker started walking toward the house. “That’s what we’re here to find out. But Berkshire’s starting to strike me as someone who had a purpose behind every act. So let’s start with that notion and see where it takes us.”

  There was a small outbuilding behind the cottage, more a lean-to than anything else. But inside it was the Honda.

  “We might need a warrant to search the house and car,” Milligan pointed out.

  “The only person able to object is dead,” replied Decker.

  He tried the car door but it was locked. “The keys might be in the house,” he said.

  They trooped to the front door. It was also locked.

  Decker leaned his heavy shoulder against it and it was no longer locked.

  They stepped inside and the old wooden plank floors creaked ominously under their weight. The air was musty and the room was chilly.

  Milligan pointed to a fireplace in the front room. “That might be the only source of heat.”

  “No, there was an aboveground oil tank at the rear, and there’s a radiator against the wall over there, though none of that may be working.”

  They walked through the three rooms. The kitchen had an ancient, empty fridge, a small stove, and a sink with stains. Decker turned on the water and a small blob of brown gunk came out.

  He poked his head into the sole bathroom. There was a toilet, a cracked mirror, a roll of toilet paper on the wall, and that was about it. The bathtub/shower had no curtain and there were rust stains on the linoleum, which was curled up in innumerable places. Decker flushed the toilet. Nothing happened. He tried a light switch. Again, nothing.

  “Okay, I doubt she was actually living here,” he said. “No water and no working bathroom and no juice.”

  Milligan gazed around. “I wonder if she even owned this place. It looks abandoned. Maybe she just used it as sort of a hideout.”

  “Which raises the question of who she was hiding from. And if she was hiding, why buy a multimillion-dollar condo and expensive car, work at a school, and volunteer at a hospice? All that puts you out in the public eye.”

  “My wife’s a schoolteacher. And while I know she loves working with the kids, if she had millions in the bank, she might be doing something else.”

  “What grade does she teach?”

  “Eighth. Where kids make the jump from nice, innocent kids to something a lot more complicated and emotional drama runs deep and hormones are out of control. Some days she comes home looking like she got hit by a bus.”

  “In my book, all teachers are underpaid,” said Decker.

  There were wooden steps leading down to a dank cellar. The floor down there was dirt. Milligan had pulled out his flashlight and shone it around.

  Behind massive cobwebs there were wooden planks set on top of cinderblocks, forming crude shelving. Stacked on the planks were rotting cardboard boxes. Decker opened each of them and Milligan pointed his light inside.

  “Junk,” said Milligan, after examining old lamps and ragged magazines and broken bric-a-brac. “I bet all this belonged to the former owners,” he added.

  Decker nodded absently. He looked around the small space, his gaze, with the aid of Milligan’s powerful light, reaching into each corner.

  “I bet she’s never even been down here,” noted Milligan.

  “No, she has.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Point your light at the steps coming down.”

  Milligan did so and saw the new wood that had replaced boards that had obviously rotted away.

  “The cellar door also had a new hinge on it.” Decker took the flashlight from Milligan and aimed it at a patch of dirt in a far corner.

  Milligan drew closer and said, “Footprints. Small. A woman’s.”

  “Berkshire’s.”

  “Good eye, Decker,” said Milligan.

  Decker didn’t seem to hear him. He leaned against the stone wall of the cellar and cast the light beam around. The illumination